Chapter 150-2: Fabricating a Backstory, Observing the Environment (2) |
With the collective brainstorming of forum players, the background setting of the player race was gradually refined.
Some enthusiastic players stitched together settings provided by different players, added their own ideas, and began writing a novel in the thread.
In the background setting, starting from the distant dawn of time, after a long era of development, the player race entered a cosmic epoch called the ‘Mythic Age.’
In this age, technology and myth intertwined. Ancient deities and the emerging players of various races coexisted, weaving a magnificent epic spanning multiple worlds.
It also mentioned the five core universes controlled by the player race, namely the Light Universe, the Shadow Universe, the Mechanical Universe, the Elemental Universe, and the Void Universe. Each universe possessed a unique ecology, civilization, and belief system. Players living in different universes mastered different abilities, but members of the player race in each universe were closely connected, linking their minds through a vast consciousness body.
Among them, spellcasters generally came from the Shadow Universe and the Elemental Universe.
Players who used armaments came from the Mechanical Universe.
Players adept at close-quarters combat came from the Void Universe.
Players skilled in functional support came from the Light Universe, and so on.
—
Three days later.
Atop the Evil Eye’s high tower, the Earthmind Evil Spirit fell into deep thought.
He felt that the intel provided by the player race was too abstract.
Over these three days, he had created many player units to make contact with different player squads.
Not a single clone was exposed, proving that the player templates he crafted truly passed for the real thing.
But problems arose in intelligence gathering.
He found that the intel provided by players was too chaotic to piece together into a complete background.
The first player squad he contacted stated they came from a Mythic Age that controlled multiple supermassive universes, possessing five core universes that produced player race unit types.
The second player squad he contacted stated they came from the Primordial Wilds world, and that the powers behind them possessed traits such as unperishing through ten thousand calamities, immunity to causality, and invulnerability to all laws.
The third player squad he contacted stated they came from a world under the control of something called Doraemon, possessing countless concept level abilities and able to generate any item at will, then raised a hand and produced a can of food. During this, he sensed no spatial fluctuation. It truly appeared from nothing.
The fourth player squad he contacted gave yet another different worldview…
In summary, members of the player race each had a different understanding of their race’s background, with mutually incompatible settings.
This made him doubt his infiltration plan.
He did not dare imagine what other outrageous background systems might be spoken by players if he continued contacting them.
There was no unified statement at all.
Although this very much aligned with his consistent impression of the player race.
Freewheeling thinking, impossible to communicate with, mental derangement… the more he interacted, the more he felt the player race definitely had a serious problem somewhere.
But the issue was that this intel was meaningless.
If the player race were truly a superpower spanning multiple worlds, the Black Tide information database should logically have records.
After all, the Black Tide had basically crossed paths with many powerful forces spanning worlds, such as the Battle Swarm.
But with so many powerful background settings provided by players, not a single player faction had ever come into contact with the Black Tide, and he could not help but suspect that the player race had noticed something amiss about him and was telling stories to deceive him.
This idea took root in his mind.
He recalled the series of battle scenes after infiltrating the player race.
As the images in his memory replayed, the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s expression changed.
It became apparent that the players seemed to be using him to fight.
Although the players’ behavior was not that obvious, there was indeed an almost imperceptible hint of amusement in their eyes when they looked at him.
After stitching together a large amount of information into a continuously playing memory image, the Earthmind Evil Spirit ground his teeth, producing a creaking sound.
He’d been duped. It seemed he had successfully infiltrated, but in reality he was being manipulated by players to fight his own Black Tide legion.
The problem was that he had worked extremely hard in the process, maximizing damage output, afraid that overacting would make players suspicious.
“Evil Eye, have I been deceived?”
The Earthmind Evil Spirit’s clone turned to look at the Evil Eye hovering behind him and asked sorrowfully.
“Do not doubt it. After compiling all video records of the battles you participated in, although there is no conclusive evidence, it can basically be confirmed that your problem had long been noticed. The player race is using you and the Black Tide under your control to fight, treating you as a free combat unit.”
“The intel provided to you is also invalid intel. It never mentioned the specific rule power we want to know, nor the underlying architecture of the player legion, or why they are launching attacks on the Black Tide, and so on. They only gave you grand background narratives, dangling you along with top-down explanations, making you provide combat power damage output, and even treating you as a get-out-of-death-free card when confronting the Black Tide.”
Hearing the Evil Eye’s affirmative answer, the Earthmind Evil Spirit involuntarily clenched his fists.
He had thought the infiltration plan was seamless, and that a near-perfect player template would have no issues at all.
He had not expected that the players had already discovered the problem.
Yet the detestable player race did not expose him, choosing instead to toy with him.
In other words, he had been treated like a monkey by members of the player race all along.
Feeling his self-esteem wounded, the Earthmind Evil Spirit gritted his teeth viciously and raised his head. With a repressed mood, he decided to vent by controlling the Black Tide to crush members of the player race.
What the Earthmind Evil Spirit did not know was that the player forum had been discussing his infiltration tactic these past few days.
They had even jokingly called his proactive contact with players: hanging an Earthmind Evil Spirit during battle, achieving twice the result with half the effort.
Countless player squads had even prepared sufficiently enticing stories in advance, just waiting for the Earthmind Evil Spirit to make contact so they could freeload a free combat unit that did not require potion expenses.
—
Primordial Altar.
Discovering that the Earthmind Evil Spirit was no longer providing players with free working units, Qi Sheng knew that the Earthmind Evil Spirit had completely abandoned the infiltration plan.
After all, the player legion was a very chaotic system, and every player had their own ideas.
Although some players had stated on the forum that everyone must unify the background setting, then provide intel to the Earthmind Evil Spirit through stories extended from that unified background, very few players abided by this rule.
When contacting the Earthmind Evil Spirit, players provided the background setting they themselves liked.
This would inevitably arouse the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s suspicion.
Being able to persist until the third day was already very good. In fact, he had long noticed that the Earthmind Evil Spirit was suspicious, but still chose to persist in order to obtain more intel.
By the third day, the excessive amount of information made the Earthmind Evil Spirit completely lose composure.
This infiltration plan had clearly struck the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s self-esteem, causing him to subsequently launch several waves of Evil Entity frenzies, sending large numbers of players into the little black room to sulk.
But from a macro perspective, the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s infiltration plan was undoubtedly very good.
The problem lay in the fact that players possessed an internal local-area-network-like system for communication and connection, and there was also Guide, this ‘demon-revealing mirror,’ following along. Even if the player created by the Earthmind Evil Spirit were disguised in detail down to the cellular level, it would be instantly exposed.
More importantly, the Earthmind Evil Spirit and the Evil Eye were always targets monitored by Guide.
All their actions took place right under Guide’s nose.
Unequal rule abilities meant that from the moment it was born, the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s infiltration plan already had a clear ending.
If the Earthmind Evil Spirit’s infiltration target were not players, it could be stated with certainty that this plan was near perfect, and it would infiltrate the vast majority of racial forces.
But he chose the wrong target, which doomed it to failure.
After this interlude, Qi Sheng no longer paid attention to the Earthmind Evil Spirit, nor to the battles in the Evil Moon scene.